Filling the Gaps of a Fatherless Childhood

fathers

I hate you.
When I start your day, I love reminding you of how worthless you are.
Listen to me. No one should listen to you. You have nothing worthwhile to say.
I can find multitudes of reasons why you should not even get up…and I enjoy sharing them with you.
I thrive on your desire for pity. People should feel sorry for you because of your lack of worth.
I can turn the smallest setback into a lifelong issue if you just listen to me.
Remember when your friend looked at you like you didn’t know what you were doing? That was me who told you that they didn’t like you. The funny thing is that I told them to look at you like that to make sure that you didn’t take any more chances.
Remember when your boss asked you to take on that new task? That was me who told you not to do it because you wouldn’t gain anything from it. In fact, I was the one who told your boss not to ask you, but your boss didn’t listen to me.
I sometimes join up with your pride to make sure it doesn’t get damaged. Somebody has to protect it. After all, if you don’t have pride in yourself, you won’t be able to do anything, right?
When it comes down to it, I may be the best friend that you have. I save you from things like embarrassment, sadness, unnecessary responsibility, confrontation and a host of other uncomfortable things.
There is no reason to have uncertainty in your life when I can make your path certain. In fact, some people may even get our names mixed up and call you by my name because you start to have the same effect on them that I do.
That is fine with me. Many follow me because it is just easy to. Life is hard enough without looking for more difficulty.
Come and join me. Pretty soon, you can be just like me.

It is hard describing why I have not written for some time. For a long time I had been getting up very early to have “my time” in the morning. Then…I burned out. Life got the best of me and I let it. I was not interested in the introspective thought anymore. I felt that my inspiration was gone and I started writing here and there, just for me. I needed to express myself in private…and some of it was not very nice.

I had some personal successes and failures. I also started looking at the “why” of what we do and the methods that create habits. Since much of this started because I realized that I was not going to live forever, a lot of it was because I felt that I had a lot to say and so little time to say it. I felt that if I helped one person find their way, I would feel accomplished at something.

My dad was a perfectionist to his own demise and I have inherited a lot of that criticizing nature. I expect excellence because I cannot provide it myself. It is true that what irritates us the most about other people is the embodiment of our own shortfalls. I cannot focus and I get frustrated when my child cannot focus. I lose interest and I criticize when I see things half-way done. I act reckless and I get mad when my child is “happy-go-lucky”.

Dealing with this has been difficult. My children are slowly achieving the age of adults but not the maturity. Neither did I. Yet I deal with this in different ways than I did not so long ago. I watch and am silent. I force myself to be patient and listen for their request for help. I take the unfounded criticism of many for things that I am not responsible for…and I live.

I look to help others where I can and live. I listen and share with those in need and live. I care and give to those who may not seem deserving and live. I attempt to make people smile because I believe my satisfaction from it is justified and live. I love without expecting it in return…and live.

I want to say to my parents and grandparents that I understand now…and I know that I still have much to learn. I understand why you prayed so much…because God is really the only one who will listen. There are things that only He can hear. I understand what it means when the scripture talks about “groanings that cannot be uttered”. Some things cannot be expressed with words or wails.

You were not perfect but you wanted me to be the best I could be, so you pushed. Even when I said that you were unfair and mean, you took the blame and stood firm. You had so many things taken away from you by me and yet you loved and lived. Thank you for loving and living in spite of me. I am seeking to build upon the foundation you provided…and live.

Recently, someone said “you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with”. Now, for some of us, this can be a scary thought. What if you spend most of your time with your children, does that mean that you are the epitome of those children, all rolled up into one mass of terror? Sometimes, you do not have the luxury of choosing who you you work with…so does that mean that you are doomed to be the conglomerate of your closest five co-workers?

Now before you start getting all negative about your future, let’s examine something. For someone to be influenced, there has to be an influencer. That person would be called a leader in some circles. If you look at that person, why are they influencing others? or why are they doing the influencing? Is it because they set out from the beginning of every day, to influence others rather than be influenced? In some rare cases that may be true, but those “spawnings” of influence usually do not last long…and there is a good reason. They are like seeds that sprouted on a rock, only to find that there was no ground under them; nothing under them to support them. Their influence needs something to root itself into; some solid ground to grasp.

The influencer has a foundation and it usually was birthed early in their life but sometimes it was created later on, having such a profound impact that it became a formed habit. The influencer can be good causing everyone around them to be better, or bad making sure that no one can infringe on their turf. Either way, they are the primary influence, whether influencing all or not. So if you are not that “influencer” or at least you think that you are not, what can you do to keep from taking on the negative attributes of the “sum of five”?

The saying referred to the “who” of your influences but not of your “what”. Let’s make a few quick “sum of five” lists.

What are the last five books you read (or at least a part of)?
What are the five TV shows that you choose to watch the most?
What are the five websites that you direct your attention to the most?
What are the five places, besides home and work, where you spend most of your time?

While it would take a while to examine each of these areas at length, let’s just look at one and you can examine the others later, if you choose. In fact, I recommend it. OK, so what are the last five books that you read with the intention of finishing one day?

You know, reading is kind of magical. In a fiction book, it has the ability to take you a foreign place and thrust you into an adventure that few, if any of us would ever see in our lifetime. In a non-fiction book, it brings a reality to light and causes us to examine our own lives at times. Either way, reading has this method of getting inside of your mind and causing you to think, form ideas and then execute. Unlike watching TV, when reading, you pause and elaborate at times to expound and create.

Keeping that in mind, what things are you putting in your mind to expound and create upon. These things are influencing you and many times, they find their way through you to influence your “five”. You may be the influencer and not even know it.

So if you are an influencer, and are choosing the things that influence who you are going to be, who are you choosing to be?

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So much has happened since Thanksgiving that it would an injustice to myself to NOT write anything. Time has been flying by and it seems sometimes that I cannot catch up with it all. Some years it seems that the holidays drag by but not this year. Until this moment, and probably afterwards, life has come very fast. I have just had to hold on for the ride. That being said, life is directable, yes, but unstoppable. How can that be? I liken it to a river.

Consider a small river, flowing through a forest. You cannot step into the middle of it and stop it. In fact, you and a hundred others stepping into the middle of it cannot either. It is not stoppable in that manner. But yet a small group of animals carrying one or two branches at a time can eventually direct it and in the process, make a cozy little home for themselves. In fact, carrying that thought a little further, they can concentrate the force of that river and make it calm in one section and raging in another. The river that may have been uncontrollable in the beginning, has succumbed to the efforts of a couple of small animals and its power harnessed to work for them.

I know that you didn’t expect a nature lesson today but you got one anyway.

So how is it that a large rodent with a flat tail can teach us about handling life? Well, it is obvious that its ability to harness the power of the river is monumental. The beavers also chop down large trees, store their food in the still portions of the river (a home-made refrigerator) and build tributaries and canals for the river to spread throughout the area. Do they do this because they know that the surrounding habitat needs it and that there efforts will be heralded at the next Annual Forest Convention? No, they do this because it is how they were taught and it is their instinct.

One thing to note though is that beavers are not perfect. Sometimes, when they are constructing and doing things instinctively, they have a dam collapse or a bear attacks and they can get hurt or a member(s) of their family dies. Sometimes pollution or human progress causes them to move. When this happens, do you know what they do? They adapt to their new surroundings and do what? What they were taught and do instinctively.

What are you teaching your friends, children or grandchildren to do instinctively? Yes, I said friends too. In case you haven’t noticed, when you hang around others, their habits and sayings tend to rub off on you and vice versa. This is why it is so imperative for you to exhibit leadership habits. Not so much to show off or try to be the big shot but to offer good teachings and instinctual habits for others to glean. And you do not have to be perfect in your efforts.

After all, you can direct life without having to stop it. And you can lead with out being the leader. One or two small branches at a time.

The element of control…why is it there? Everyone likes to be in control. Even when it seems that someone is out of control, the reasoning for their actions is for them to be in control.

Back to the chess game. Stalemate. Why? Because one has refused to move. Reasoning? The game or process is coming to a climax and the result will be evident: Success …or failure. Both of them are painful. The latter means rejection. The former means that the process will be encouraged again and the possibility of rejection will creep up again.

This stagnation is real with many. It is a gap that is hard to fill. The ability to risk rejection and succeed or fail is coveted but seemingly unreachable at times.

So what is the gap? If someone were raised without a father or a child of divorce, the fear is sometimes too real to bear. Taking the step into the unknown is stagnating… paralyzing…debilitating. Whether acceptance or rejection, there will be rejection at some point if the process is allowed to continue. So immobility is the choice.

It is the choice. The act of not choosing is still a choice, and immobility is choosing to fail.

And waiting until there is not any other choice but action? Is what? Still failure or a forced effort?

Many entrepreneurs have talked about some of their best work coming at the time when that effort is forced. Some of their greatest innovation coming to be when they had no other choice. But should someone put themselves in a detrimental situation every time they desire great innovation?

There is a better way; in fact, many better ways but that “effort” can be engineered rather than forced. Therein lies the immobility factor again, though. Some people will plan themselves to the grave.

What makes you feel capable of doing the things you set out to do? Or do you just do it whether you feel capable or not? Many times, when your back is up against the wall, like a wild animal outnumbered by its aggressors, you attack a need. But is that what it takes to get you to act? And once you do, do you feel that it was not done well efficiently?

Wouldn’t it work better if you acted, made mistakes, corrected them in a timely manner and continued until you got finished? “Attacking” the issue with a calculated fervor before it has progressed to the point of expediency?

The problem can be procrastination,…fear, …laziness, …you name it. It is something that is engrained in you and your psyche. To get past it, you need to fight the urge to “not do it”. Like quitting smoking or eating junk or drinking, it is an urge that is just as destructive. If you don’t do it, you are putting yourself at the risk of going into attack mode to get it done.

This is part of posterity thinking, you know. Remeber the chess game? What happens in a chess game when one player decides to wait, stall or just not move? Well, if it is a timed game, that player loses. But if it is not, the game stands still…the other player is at the mercy of the first…who is in control.

I heard once about a professional football player that while he was in college got into an argument with his professor about benevolence. I believe that the player was Ricky Williams. The argument was that the professor claimed that people do not give selflessly, they do so to make themselves feel good. Mr. Williams stood his ground by saying that this was not true. As is true in most arguments, it was never settled.

So what is your motivation for giving? Not just money, I am talking about giving. Is it inherent that you give to give yourself a good feeling or is it a sense of “the right thing to do”?

We give of ourselves, sometimes not knowing of the return but yet we give anyway. Is it because we know that we will feel better about ourselves afterwards or that we have been convicted to do so and the “feeling better” is a sense of relief?

It probably differs in many cases, but what about in the case of giving where may never see the return even if it happens. Our society is not able to see this. They say “What does it matter? I won’t be here anyway. Live and let live. Be wild, be free, it’s all about me”. But what about your legacy?

I know, legacy, for some people is a strong word. “Something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past”. So really what does it matter. It matters because our paradigm needs to shift beyond ourselves. Truth is that you may be already seeing a return on things done previously. The return from times of irresponsibility. The return from days of selfishness. The return of those “what does it matter?” days. And even though we can look at those returns and wonder “what if I would have done that differently?”, we should look and say “what now?”

It is like a chess game. Some people said that great chess players start a game, knowing exactly what moves they are going to make in each circumstance, knowing how their opponent will react to each of their moves. But the beginning moves are the ones where things are volatile. Each move that follows, corrals the opponent into their plan until finally victory is achieved.

This is how purpose works. Direction, calling, destiny. Each move keeps you moving in a certain direction until victory is achieved.

Giving has a purpose. Giving of money, time, wisdom, even hugs. They work towards the ultimate goal of a purpose. And even though we may have a sense of necessity or a desire for fulfillment, what does that matter?

“Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.”